Textures and materials to show up while playing animation in 3d viewport
When using the viewport in render view mode, sluggish animation and freezing are not uncommon when you try to play your animation. Try setting the viewport render mode to "material" or "textured" and you should be able to play animations smoothly with your textures/materials visible and animated.

This has one caveat however, the Blender Internal render engine does not support procedural texure in material view mode, and will display the object incorrectly.